"Greece will default sometime in 2012"

So says Taki, who adds:

... this prediction comes from the great oracle of economics Taki, the very same Taki who smelled a rat even before the Greek government was caught red-handed cooking the books under the advice of the poisonous giant squid, Goldman Sachs.

If Greece restructures any of its debt the wrong way, it'll enter technical default, and I think that's already happened. If I read Zero Hedge correctly, a default "event" has already occurred and lowered the national rating to CCC. Of course, more events are yet to come. "How can anyone take these Greek politicians seriously?" Let's not limit this to Greek politicians.

An evolutionist looks at churches

Proposes that Protestant "openness" is an invitation to extinction.

Bitcoin - more bit than coin?

John Robb, who is usually good with P2P, is down on bitcoin. Joel Bowman, part of a team of bubble watchers, says stop picking on bitcoin. Samizdata sees the fate of the Internet in the lowly bitcoin. Cryptome says what we have here is triple entry book keeping - a good thing.

It's hard to imagine goldbugs trading physical for blips. These bitcoin hoarders must be a different beast entirely.

There's no need to hedge risk

... because there's no risk to hedge. Welcome to zombieland where capitalism = nostalgia.

Regulators vs hippies

Yoghurt eaters patronizing a farmer's market in California are discovering that voting Democrat has consequences.

The generals were terrified

Some generals in command of our PowerPoint Army went four days without a PowerPoint slideshow. "Heartstopping."

Barofsky is our favorite ex-bureaucrat

Dan Rather sometimes acts like a journalist. Who knew?

“Counsel, you’re scaring me”, Mr. [Dan] Rather said. “You should be scared, I’m scared. You can’t not be scared.”, former TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky replied.

Profanity at the link.

Anthony Powell remembered

A few years ago, I gave my wife A Dance to the Music of Time and she liked it. She detests my politics but reads my novels!

I'm not, therefore a disinterested party. I had read it myself in the 70s after reading Evelyn Waugh's war trilogy. Waugh's books were strong drink - a Marine Corps lieutenant colonel told me how much he cried at the end of this trilogy. This brought a tear to my own eye. Blast sentimentality.

Powell's series was less striking, in terms of that sentimental chord, less cartoonish as well, and given the length, the civility, the resonance, you had the feeling this can go on forever. When it ends, you are at a loss and the loss has a tinge of surprise. It's good to remember Powell, and better to remember him at length. There is such a thing as the conservative novel.

Understanding the oligarchy and wage slavery

This is a good post, but Charles Hugh Smith can do much better: "Our Participation Fuels Financial Tyrrany." Smith is a wonder, sitting on the emerging left-right convergence, however he lacks certain basic reading in his education, such as the Fugitives' work generally and Man Against Money in particular.

Hell week for royalists

We're tired, very tired. (1) Queen's birthday. (2) Duke of Edinburgh's birthday. (3) Anniversary of Umberto II's departure from Italy.

All this hot on the heels of the death of Grand Duchess Leonida Georgievna, the Romanov heir, and her successor's visit to Russia (Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna).

No longer available in Greece

Courtesy, American Monarchist.

The tragedy of the feminized male

This Limbaugh meme of the tragedy of the feminized male (as being played out in the Weiner scandal) is powerful stuff. This is the old Limbaugh from 1984 and the kind of analysis on which he built his show. When the man was hitting on twelve cylinders (3 hours x 4 segments per), it was like four weeks of great newspaper columnist punditry in one show.

He needs to return to that level. The linked transcript is too long, but skim it: the meme is worth it. And excellent photoshopping!

Moldbug is back

And he's serving "slow history"...

Back in a new twitterized format

Let's try something different...

Towards a pre-Goldwater Republicanism

The flight of wealthy Obama voters out of the Democratic Party has begun and the GOP is about to be inundated by money and personalities that hail from a pre-1964 political era. That was when liberals of means knew their interests and acted accordingly. This flight from the Democrats will be augmented by a tide of independents who have just now figured out "what it is."

Rockefeller returns and the Snow/Collins/Specter types will soon hold the commanding heights within the party. I fear conservatives within the GOP will be the rump of a rump (the larger rump being the pre-Obama Republicans).

It may be time to take the New York Conservative Party's example national.

(Scanned news clip above has a caption from 1970: "That venerable institution, Nelson Rockefeller, with sidekick Bob Dole looking on, vents his political philosophy on a group of student demonstrators who had previously vented theirs. The action occurred in Binghamton, N.Y., on Thursday. Need we ask why Rocky was fingered for the job? Courtesy Eicher.)

Bumper sticker of the day

Harsh, and yet...

Certifiably demonic caregivers

Hospices care for people in the last stage of illness. A hospice will have clergy on staff for obvious reasons. At the Hospice by the Sea in Florida, "chaplains were told Feb. 23 to 'cease and desist from using God in prayers.'"

Make it better

The other day I saw a bumper sticker, "Veterans for Obama," affixed to a car with handicap license plates. Assuming the handicap was earned in the service, I wonder what the driver of that vehicle makes of the latest news from his hero.

In the late 20th Century, America was a land governed by lawyers. They would make their case / suggestion / point and leave it at that. Nowadays we are ruled by Ivy League professors who happen also to be lawyers and they are - of course - more intelligent and diligent than mere attorneys.

So when the proposal is made, "Let the war wounded heal themselves," the old-style politician would have thought his work was done. Brilliant idea, it's on the table, done. But the new class of leader has the facts and figures to prove it will be worthwhile to allow the wounded to heal themselves. He is prepared to argue a full case in the court of public opinion. In this case we save $540 million if we cut off medical support to veterans. Awesome. Case closed.

You see the difference between an Ivy League law professor and an ordinary attorney? And yes you can put a price on suffering. Juries do it all the time. Don't look so shocked.

Not being a professor, I tend to wonder about how things will be implemented, however.

What will the veteran have to do to get the same level of medical care afforded to civilian Obama voters? The vet could pretend to be an indigent civilian but when the screener asks where the condition arose, he would answer "war" and be disqualified from government assistance. Oops.

The solution appears to be: (1) go to an emergency room (2) speak no English (3) present forged ID. Or, veterans could simply perform back-alley operations on each other.

Whatever their choices, the savings to the government will be substantial. Enough money will be freed up for earmarks, bailouts, federal funding for community activism. Perhaps enough servicemen may still remain motivated enough to safely ferry Obama, Reid, and Pelosi about in their military aircraft of choice.

This government is all about savings - but the right kind of savings.

A bean ball hits the beantown

Looks like Boston is shaping up as a one-newspaper town - with that paper being Murdoch's. Lovely.

A Gordon Brown moment

To celebrate his visit, a little something from Private Eye.